jay65536 wrote:To me I think the biggest thing is that when we talk about what we prefer in a scoring system, there's no excuse for saying "I'm in favor of this because it's in the rules". You like what you like, and you should have your own reasons why.

Agreed, though I would say that "it's in the rules" is a flawed way of saying, "I like this scoring system because it feels the closest to an unscored game." It's definitely an opinion rather than a fact (which some players refuse to accept), but there is at least a foundation there. I even consider this to be the case for draw-sized scoring; it seems to me to be the system that yields the most similar gameplay to an unscored game. Over time, however, I've found that's not necessarily a good thing.

You and I obviously have different opinions of what an unscored game is like!

Back when I used to play exclusively FtF house games, where none of the group played competitively, the game would always go one of two ways: either one person would make a solo bid, and we'd call a draw if the solo bid was stopped; or no one would get to make a solo bid because people defended well, and we'd eventually get bored and call a draw. Even though there was the idea that smaller draws were better, we would all play to win and not really care how big the draw was when we called the game. Because why would we?

To me the game is most fun when you are fighting for a solo, fighting to stop one, or fighting for your life. Games that are being played out solely for the sake of draw-whittling, I'm less of a fan of.

jay65536 wrote:3) What I've been wondering for awhile is, is there a way to make a scoring system that bends the "equality in a draw" rule partially but not completely? Like, maybe there's a way to make a good scoring system where most draws split points equally, and/or most players share equally in a draw, but with some kind of mechanism that rewards exceptional performances so a tournament field can have separation at the top? Perhaps this is just a pipe dream, though, because as I said upthread I'd probably need to run my own tournament to ever have a chance to try it out.

What you're describing is, at least in part, the Dixiecon tournament scoring system. It's probably not what you want, and it has its own downsides, but its hybrid of draw size, center count, and rank seem to be geared to fulfill that exact purpose: keep draws mostly equal, and provide incentives for secondary goals beyond win/draw/lose.

Unless one moves away from a fixed-sum system (or a near-fixed-sum system, like PlayDip's), I just don't see a way to do this without bringing draw whittling back into the mix. Small tournaments can definitely operate with a non-fixed-sum system; I'm actually doing that very thing this year with the Tournament Through Time. But for a perpetual online platform, I just don't see that being scalable in the long term.

What I'm describing is NOT the Dixie scoring system. It's a subtle difference in language that I actually think would be a big difference if it were ever tried in a tournament. Dixie is a system that, as you say, keeps *all* draws *mostly* equal. My idea is a system that keeps MOST draws EXACTLY equal, and keeps most draw participants' scores exactly the same as most others', but with some exceptions. I think it would derail this thread to start talking about my specific idea (which would be my attempt to address the bolded) in too much detail, but hopefully you see the difference.

By the way, Dixie isn't a hybrid of all three. It's primarily draw-based, with a center count component. I suppose that you could argue that rank matters when you lose, but to me that barely registers. The top-ranked finishers at every Dixie all have scores as good as or better than all 3ways, and total centers is often a major factor in the order of finish.

I'm sort of curious to see whether people who are playing in those games are actually playing for the incentives of the scoring system, and then, if they are, how that changes how they play. I know that during the PDET17 top board, which came down to center count alone, spectators were still carrying on about the draw size, and it appeared while I was watching it that the players themselves--at least one, possibly more--were not changing their play to account for the fact that whoever finished with the most centers was going to be the tournament winner.

One of the bigger debates around scoring systems in the FtF community is not just what the theoretical "best" system is, but how each system changes the way people play and what incentives should be encouraged. This is a big part of the reason draw-based scoring has fallen out of fashion in FtF tournaments, when it used to be nearly universal in North America.

jay65536 wrote:I'm sort of curious to see whether people who are playing in those games are actually playing for the incentives of the scoring system, and then, if they are, how that changes how they play. I know that during the PDET17 top board, which came down to center count alone, spectators were still carrying on about the draw size, and it appeared while I was watching it that the players themselves--at least one, possibly more--were not changing their play to account for the fact that whoever finished with the most centers was going to be the tournament winner.

One of the bigger debates around scoring systems in the FtF community is not just what the theoretical "best" system is, but how each system changes the way people play and what incentives should be encouraged. This is a big part of the reason draw-based scoring has fallen out of fashion in FtF tournaments, when it used to be nearly universal in North America.

The top board wasn’t decided by center count. Unless I’ve completely misread something, the scoring system in place was only used to select the players who would play at the top. Then the tournament champion(s) would be the soloist or drawing players, with everyone else ranked by score.

Anyway, the fact that the games in the C-Diplo series are being run French F2F style (with a 1907 terminus) absolutely made a difference in the first game, and I expect it to continue.

As for the “best” scoring system, that just strikes me as a futile argument. Maybe what they need instead is a set of 2-3 recommended/approved systems, so that different tournaments can focus on different aspects of the game.

NoPunIn10Did wrote:The top board wasn’t decided by center count. Unless I’ve completely misread something, the scoring system in place was only used to select the players who would play at the top. Then the tournament champion(s) would be the soloist or drawing players, with everyone else ranked by score.

It said quite clearly in the tournament rules that the player who finished the top board with the highest score on that board would be champion. Since it was only one board, it would come down to the SoS component, which would come down to highest center count.

Already in North America, there are, in a de facto way, 2-3 "approved" scoring systems. There's Dixie, there's SoS, and there's Carnage. I honestly can't remember the last time I played a tournament under a system other than one of those three.

People are always going to disagree on what aspects of the game a scoring system should be geared towards, and I agree that debate is mostly moot; but the non-moot part of the debate to me is whether a given scoring system is actually successful at incentivizing what it's supposed to. That's very often the biggest sticking point with draw-based systems, which has already come up upthread.

In a related topic, I bounced some ideas off of Dave Maletsky, and I think I've come up with a Carnage-like scoring system that could be used on this site (and would still play nicely with Elo and be comparable to existing DSS scores).

I don't know whether it would ever catch on on the site as you suggest, but I officially like this system (or base of a system--for tournaments the rank scores could be multiplied by 100 or 1000 and the center counts added in for tiebreaks) better than the original Carnage. It solves one of my 2 biggest issues with the Carnage system, which is that 2nd place is too close to 1st place. In this new system, if you get one 1st and one 3rd, you are better than if you get two 2nd's--which I believe is as it should be.

I read your other thread and I've noticed that people are--of course--objecting to the rank-based scoring aspect. I see you directed them here, but maybe later today I will post in there.

WHSeward wrote:Whipping used to use a system that was (roughly) one third draw-based, one third center-based, one third lead-based. "A scoring system with something for everyone... to hate" was the joke. It has since moved to just using sum of squares.

So out of curiosity I tried to look up what this system actually was. According to what I looked up, it's this:

-If you are eliminated, your score is the number of years you played.-If you aren't eliminated but lose to a solo, your score is 10 times your center count.-If you aren't eliminated and there is no solo, your score is 10 times your center count, plus 60 divided by the number of survivors, plus an additional twice your center count if you topped the board.-If you solo, you get 10 times your center count plus 128.

This looks to me like a system whose primary component is center count, with a lead-based secondary component and a draw-based tertiary component that's roughly, but not quite, equal to the lead component.

Do you know what people didn't like about this system? Was it the fact that centers were the primary component or was it the weird way the 3 components were mixed? Or something else?

jay65536 wrote:-If you are eliminated, your score is the number of years you played.-If you aren't eliminated but lose to a solo, your score is 10 times your center count.-If you aren't eliminated and there is no solo, your score is 10 times your center count, plus 60 divided by the number of survivors, plus an additional twice your center count if you topped the board.-If you solo, you get 10 times your center count plus 128.

Do you know what people didn't like about this system? Was it the fact that centers were the primary component or was it the weird way the 3 components were mixed? Or something else?

I have no idea what they objected to, but having "number of years played" as an absolute measure, rather than a basis of comparison (as in Carnage), is problematic.

Unless they had a year limit in place, getting eliminated late in the game could net more points than losing with one center.